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It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a post about exercising. I’m sure you won’t be surprised at what I’m about to tell you. (Although it surprised me!)

I was acknowledged for doing the most workouts at my health club for the month of August.

Marcy at the Top of the List

See my name at the top of the list?

I wasn’t aiming to claim the most visits and I wasn’t keeping track even though some members at the club don’t believe me. A new doctor I had been seeing recommended I workout AT LEAST 5 times a week! To me, this translated into doing more than 5 times a week so I was at the club everyday it was open: 6 days a week. I did that for 2 1/2 weeks straight and I didn’t take the 7th day off when I was home!

How was it? It was exhausting! Are they serious? What senior citizen can continually exercise at that pace? Maybe if they didn’t put much effort into their workouts but my workouts aren’t like that. I put my all into it. I’m known at my club as the person who works out the hardest. Really, it’s more of a social club for a lot of the members. I hope their social friends visit them when they’re in the hospital recovering from illnesses due to their lack of exercise!

So, there has to be a balance here. It should be taken into account how seriously you exercise! Plus, I don’t exercise for 30 minutes. I figure since I’m there, I’m going to exercise until I’m tired and that is usually 50 minutes and, depending on which gym I’ve been going to and the equipment they have, as long as 1 hr and 15 minutes. I think doctors need to ask their patients about this. Or, maybe I need to volunteer this information the next time at my appointment since I seem to be stereotyped: Senior = Sedentary.

MY GOALS

I’ve been working on increasing my upper body strength in the past few months and the effort shows. My biceps have increased .25% while I’ve slowly continued to lose weight. I’m still using the caloriecount website and I don’t know if I can ever do without it! I am seriously hooked on it because it has been so beneficial to me!

The reason I’ve been working on my upper body strength is that women in general, are known to have poor upper body strength and I’ve always wanted to do a chin up. So far, I can master a chin up half way. This is a new goal for me. I like to challenge myself and I am always seeking new exercise goals to keep things interesting and to have something to achieve.

Since April of this year, I put together a warm-up routine for myself that I do now every time I exercise. It is about 6 minutes long and involves a variety of arm movements but also leg and ab movements too. I am crediting this routine for healing my shoulder issues that had dragged on for over 2 years! I will write up and post the routine in a future post. You may want to try it. If it worked for me, it may work for you.

Recently, I saw a 75-year-old female body builder on TV. She was lean and didn’t look anywhere near 75! She was inspirational! I was telling one of the gals at my club about her and I said that the body builder was my idol to which she replied, “You’re MY idol!” I got a kick out of that. Hey, that’s OK with me. That’s what this blog is all about: talking the talk AND walking the walk; reaching that goal at the end of the rainbow!

I joined a new health club. You already know about some of the problems I was having at my former club. Let me tell you why I left.

I had been in the private shower/changing room, next to the

PRIVATE SHOWER ROOM

ladies’ locker rooms.

There are two of these rooms; two on the side of the ladies shower/locker area

and two on the side of the men’s shower/locker area. As I was IN the shower, a man started pounding on the door, telling me to hurry up! He was pounding hard enough to break the door down. I told him I’d be out in a minute. About 10 minutes later, he was back, pounding on the door again! He said I had been in there 1/2 hour. (I hadn’t.) I was furious!

I finished showering, got dressed and opened the door, expecting him to be standing there. He wasn’t but he was walking down the hall towards me. I figured it was him but I asked if he was waiting for the room. When he said yes, that’s when I gave him a piece of my mind. I can count on one hand the times in my life that I went into a tirade over something and this was one of those times. He was not going to get away with this kind of obnoxious behavior.

I was yelling at him in a very loud voice and I did that deliberately to make sure other people heard me. In the end, believe it or not, this guy was literally shaking. I don’t know if that means that I scared him to death or if he was holding back wanting to punch my lights out! I just didn’t care, I was fed up and this was the last straw!

He told me that the men’s changing rooms were being cleaned. I said, “We’ll see about that!”

He kept complaining that I was in the shower for a 1/2 hour. At which point I looked at him in contempt and called him a jackass. At which point he said the “F” word to me.

I stormed off and hailed the first health club employee I could find. I said I needed to speak to the manager. The employee said he was a manager. He was all of about 30? I told him what happened, that this guy kept pounding on the door telling me to hurry up while I was in the shower, and that he used the “F” word to me. The manager kept saying over and over, “We’ll take care of it.” He kept apologizing.

I finally calmed down because I realized that he wasn’t going to do anything about it. So I asked, “Aren’t you going to ask me his name?” “Don’t you have any questions?” He kept saying, “We’ll take care of it.” So, out of desperation, I described what clothes the guy was wearing and what he looked like. In disgust, I left.

I tell you this story for your own safety and for the safety of your sisters, your mothers, and your daughters who go to a health club/gym. All during the time that I was yelling at this jerk, NOBODY came to find out what the ruckus was. If this guy had become violent, he could have easily pushed me back into the shower room, done some damage, and nobody would have witnessed it. There are plenty of cameras around this club but NONE in the hallway leading to the side door of the ladies locker rooms

and the two private changing rooms where we were.

The manager said that they had been giving the mens’ rooms a “deep cleaning.” How stupid do these “managers” of this health club have to be to not put up a sign on the doors letting women know that the men will be using these facilities on this day?

The manager said these rooms are “family” rooms. So, in other words, he was defending this jerk’s right to be on the women’s locker room side using these rooms.

Can you imagine if I went over to the men’s locker side and started pounding on the “family” rooms telling a guy to hurry up and get out? They would probably handcuff and cart me away!

When I was new at this club, one year ago, I went on a guided tour and the guy who gave me the tour told me that these rooms were used for changing baby’s diapers, and also if someone preferred privacy rather than being in the larger open locker room. He never said that men were allowed to use them. In fact, he never took me on the men’s side of the locker room to show me the “family” rooms on their side. He never said I could use the rooms on the men’s side either. I never even considered that men had these rooms on their side of the locker area until this incident. In the year that I had been there, I had never seen any men use the rooms on the women’s side and I had gone 4-5 times a week, on various days, at various times.

The bottom line was that there was no respect for women at this club. I certainly didn’t need to feel stressed out after I worked out!

Make sure there is one near the entrance to the ladies side of the locker rooms AND that they can “see” all areas of the club.

2. Don’t join a club that is so large that your voice gets “lost” due to the distance between you and other people.

3. Ask questions. Ask if men are allowed to use women’s showers and/or changing rooms. If there is an emergency “cleaning” or other type of emergency can men use women’s facilities. If so, will a notice be posted to let women know?

4. I am in the Silver Sneakers program which allows me to change health clubs easily. Even though they had me sign a contract, it’s fairly worthless and probably nothing more than a sales ploy to make you feel obligated to stay with them. I don’t.

When I was new, employees at this club photographed me and put my name in large letters on an ID card as big as a charge card. This is another thing I didn’t like about this club. Although they provided towels for free, you had to turn in your ID card at the desk in exchange for a towel. Sometimes the desk was unmanned and anyone could go behind the desk to pick up their ID card which allowed them to see YOUR ID card and your name/photo. This poses a security issue for you. I only used their towels once. When I saw the lack of care regarding my ID card, I brought my own towels from then on.

I have been at my new club for two weeks now. In the Silver Sneakers program, the club gets paid every time you swipe your “ID” at the entrance or whatever type of “ID” the club has you use. My current club uses a small numbered tag-like ID that I attached to my keychain. There are no privacy or safety issues with it.

My new club is a small club with only two private shower rooms on each side of the club. One side says, WOMEN’S RESTROOM and I assume the other side says, MEN’S RESTROOM. Ceiling cameras can view all areas of the club.

Final Thoughts

Women have as much right to be at a health club as men. We have the right to take care of our bodies. We have the right to be treated with respect, especially when we’re paying customers. I am left with this question: Why aren’t there more women owned, women run health clubs? Why?

As I was reading through some health blogs, I came across Bob Doucette’s post titled, Don’t Be That Guy. He made some good points about guys (and girls) who practice what Bob calls “douchebaggery” (ill manners in the gym) and I immediately recalled an incident that had aggravated me recently at my health club.

I told Bob I was going to steal his title because I liked it. I’m also going to steal his style of telling the story because it is a good one. I’m not going to steal his term douchebaggery because he coined it and fair is fair. I prefer the term dolt.

I’ve made it to the gym two Fridays in a row and I don’t usually go on Friday. Last Friday as I was working my biceps on the fitness machine, an old coot walked over and stood very close to me so that I felt uncomfortable operating the machine. Guys: don’t ask me if I have beer in my water bottle. I don’t find it charming especially coming from you with your over-sized beer gut at my eye level. I told this dolt that I don’t drink much in case he was screwing up the courage to ask me out for a brew. He made another comment about how he only drinks one…and then another one, and then another one. I put my head down as if to say I’m going back to working out now, goodbye! He left. Don’t be THAT guy.

Are You This Guy?

When I work out, I get very focused. I’m busy counting my repetitions and I don’t have much time for chat. I’m working with machines and I don’t want to be hurt while using them by not paying attention to what I’m doing and making small talk or whatever. I was working (this was the same Friday) at the machine for my adductors, or my inner thigh muscles. Ladies, this machine puts you in an uncompromising position similar to the one at your OB-GYN doctor’s office except that you’re sitting down. A friend of the old coot had placed the bottle of cleaning solution near me. He bent down to take a look at a part of me (that I’m not going to describe here), pretending to pick up the bottle. I ignored him but I heard a woman’s voice from behind me yell, “WATCH IT!!” as a warning to him. He was sufficiently embarrassed because she had caught him in the act. He sheepishly asked me if I wanted the bottle and I said no. That was dolt number 2. Don’t be THAT clown!

Don’t Be a Clown!

When I walk on the track, especially after I’ve worked out and am sweaty and exhausted, don’t pretend that you don’t see me on the track and cut across in front of me making me stop short. I can’t tell you how many men (and a few women too) have done this. I’d hate to see them driving in traffic! I got so ticked off at people doing this that one day, I saw a guy walking towards the track and I could see from the speed he was walking that he wasn’t going to stop. He looked directly at me and I looked directly at him; glared is more like it. If he dared to cross in front of me that day I was going to give him a piece of my mind that the entire floor would have heard! In other words, if looks could kill, he’d be dead. He saved his life by stopping until I walked on. Don’t be THAT guy or THAT girl!

I like facing the big picture windows when I use the elliptical trainer machine. I go for 45 minutes which is what I normally do. Just because I did 45 minutes this past Friday, it doesn’t mean I was waiting patiently for you to take the machine next to mine when there are 25 other *$#! elliptical machines on the floor. I’m not interested. Read my body language: I’m not looking at you, I’m not smiling at you, I’m not talking to you. What does that tell you? Don’t be THAT guy!

I’m working out at the gym.

I tried to find a good video from YouTube to insert into this blog since Bob had one on his blog, but they were all pathetic. There was one video about meeting women at the gym that almost made it into this blog until one of the guys in it made the comment, “But she had makeup on.” Just because I comb my hair and wear lipstick to the gym doesn’t mean I’m there to pick up men. It’s hard to believe I have to defend that. Really, aren’t you grasping at straws here fellas? Women go to the gym for most of the same reasons as you: to get in shape and be healthy. Don’t demean us by thinking otherwise.

Here’s a clue: be extra diligent cleaning the machine that you’re on when you see me waiting for it. I dig your message of respect. Be THAT guy. It’s OK for you to look silly stopping short and nearly falling when you’re exhausted from working out and about to crash into me when I’m on the track. I appreciate YOU making every effort to avoid a collision. Be THAT guy. Finally, it’s OK to tell me that I don’t have to wipe down the machine after I’ve finished using it because you’re just going to put your towel on the machine anyway. Be THAT guy. I’d go out with THAT guy.

There may be a follow up to this post because there is no shortage of dolts at my health club. I just picked the ones from recent memory.

There is nothing more frustrating than arriving at the gym realizing you forgot something. Like, socks, your lock, or something essential. Something that you can’t do without. So, after you rushed to get there you now have to turn around and head home. Here’s help. If you wear these socks in the photo, you may really need help!

I’ve had memberships at three health clubs over the course of many years. For me, the most important thing is proximity to my home. If a gym is too far away, there is less likelihood that I (or you) will go. So, it’s best if there is more than one to choose from since there are other important variables involved in choosing a gym.

I was walking on the 3-lane-track of a modern, two-story health club. An elderly gentleman, about 60, sidled up to me and asked, “Did you tell them the correct way to walk on the track?” I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. He continued, “Those two have been going halfway around the track the wrong way and then they walked back halfway the right way. They did this about four or five times!” I listened to him as he urgently told me what two young teenagers were doing on the track. When he finally gave me an opportunity to speak I said, “No, I didn’t see them doing that. I just told them that they should move to the right because the left lane is the passing lane. They had moved all the way to the left to let me pass them on the right.”

This didn’t seem like much of a problem to me and I figured that they were new. It was a boy and girl who looked to be about 13 years of age. The boy smiled and quickly moved out of the way for me (he was on the far left). I moved on and it was then that the elderly gentleman caught up with me.

“Everyone has to go in the same direction otherwise someone is going to get hurt.” He wasright. We can’t all go in whatever direction we please, it would be chaos! He thanked me and hurried on leaving me to think about what had just happened.

The two teens were gone, disappeared. Apparently they saw the gentleman talking to me and thought that I must be a staff member.

This health club is a family health club. There are elderly people using the track, moms pushing strollers with kids inside, elderly people with walkers, and sometimes very seriously handicapped people who can barely walk at all on the track. There is more than enough room for all of us but we need to follow the simple rules: go in the same direction!

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I am taking a vacation from my blog so do not expect the usual post from me on the 3rd Friday of the month. My responsibilities have piled up and something had to give! I hope to resume posting when I have more free time. Keep up with your good health meals and good exercise […]